Conflicting Loyalties by Trudy West (NC-17)

[seremela2.livejournal.com]

For my second story I want to rec one from Trudy West. I have loved the Star Wars movies for years (decades when it's about the original trilogy), but it was one of her stories that sort of unexpectedly drew me into the fandom only last year: Forgotten. I loved it and decided to search for more. Since that story has already been recced, I will rec another one. It was a hard choice, since I love all of her stories, but I've decided on Conflicting Loyalties.

Fandom: STAR WARS
Pairing: Qui-Gon/Shmi; Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan, Anakin
Length: long, it's in three parts and they are all three long (happy sigh)
Author: Trudy West
on LJ: unknown
Author Website: her stories are on Masters and Apprentices
WARNINGS: male/male sex, memories of torture and rape, brief references to sexual abuse of a minor

Why this must be read: This story is a gripping retelling of the Prequel trilogy, after Naboo. It's a 'Qui-Gon survived' story, but very different from other takes on this theme. Here everyone thinks he's dead and when Obi-Wan finds out the truth, it's not the happy reunion he would have hoped for.

West tells a story of loss and unrequited love, and of learning to live with mistakes and with traumatic events; she does this in a very beautiful and touching way, rich on emotions, and it even has a happy ending - sort of, because Anakin's turning, the massacre of the Jedi and all that still happens. Besides all that she doesn't shy away from the slavery on Tatooine, something that seemed to have been almost forgotten in AofC and RotS. All in all I can't recommand it enough.


Excerpt

He tried to reassure the boy that there was no need to worry about his mother. "She's doing all the same things that she used to do when you were there. Everything's just the same."

"But it’s not," Anakin said. "I'm not there to help out anymore. I always thought it would be so great to be a free person, but I can't do anything more for her than when I was a slave. I'm actually doing less. It's not fair. Why can't we free her too? Why not all the slaves? The Jedi could do it, if they decided to bother."

Obi-Wan gave a philosophical answer about how the Jedi can only help change occur when the time is ripe, and how everyone, freemen and slaves, were bound by their responsibilities and obligations, that we all carry chains of one type or another. It sounded lame to him even as he said it.

Anakin, with his usual directness, cut right through the moralizing. "You’ve never been a slave. What makes you think you know anything about it?"

That was rude, but he let it pass. "Actually I have been a slave on occasion."

"Yeah, when?" Anakin was curious but skeptical.

"On several missions, in disguise."

"Oh." The boy deflated. "That doesn't really count. That's just playacting. And you had Master Qui-Gon to look after you. Mom and I never had anybody looking after us. We were real slaves, not pretend ones."

The sound of Qui-Gon’s name gave him a pang, as it always did. He searched for the right thing to say, but Anakin preempted him. "Forget it. It doesn't matter. You don't understand. Nobody here does. Nobody here cares what happens to anybody back on Tatooine."

Conflicting Loyalties